


The World Reclaimed

by Nemonus



Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-20
Updated: 2016-07-20
Packaged: 2018-07-25 13:38:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7534792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nemonus/pseuds/Nemonus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Euclid-319 is a powerful Warlock in self-imposed solitude. Ikora goes to check on him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The World Reclaimed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [saltineofswing](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=saltineofswing).



On that day, you made a map.

The technicians at the Ishtar Academy might have made them like this, once. Paper wouldn’t have been as convenient as digital, but someone might have liked to lay their thoughts out one after another, assigning each idea to a location in space. The format lent itself to mapping and mapping-over; you drew in four kinds of pen and made attached augmented reality cues for both yourself and your Ghost. You were tracking Vex, which required tracking Fallen, both of which required tracking Guardians. Convenient that they all wanted to throw themselves at each other over the Ishtar Collective, its databases and its libraries.

It was good work. You were running efficiently, not too hot, comfortable in your solitude. It rained yesterday, fierce, bringing the smell of salt off the ocean, but today would be hazy and cool in the reclaimed world outside the half-ruined Academy. Besides yourself and the one standing behind you there was another Warlock out there venting energy, practically bleeding it. One Voidwalker inhabited a world like black velvet, calm and even; one Sunsinger whistled high notes. External cameras would have just been a distraction, so you turned off three. The diagram was still visible in the low light, yellow paper and a pen using rare, rare ink - but there was something calming about writing this way. It wasn’t the most efficient way to organize it, but it dedicated some of your voluntary processes, distracting them from repetitive checks of their autonomous counterparts. It made it easier for you to doodle.

Maybe later, after Ikora left, you could visit the hot springs, watch the way the bird-dragons interacted with the thermals, wonder if the updrafts meant a new storm was edging closer, bringing its curtains of red and green cloud.

You had a bad day.

Ikora knew it. 

“Are you doing well out here?” Ikora said. You had to deactivate several defenses, some as old as the Academy and some much newer, before you could let her in. She was the Sun accounted for; Ikora filled the room with her own warm gravity. The Void presence bounced around outside. Still, that far out, it wasn’t likely to trip anything.

“Don’t … don’t do that,” you said. Talking was distracting. You tried to concentrate on the map. It wasn’t difficult; subroutines slammed into place. The Hezen Corrective would probably move to take that Conflux by the deep jungle in the next few days. If anything, they would reach out to one of the smaller nodes in order to make more synaptic connections before they pushed toward the larger node.

"It’s me.”

“I uh, I don’t think that’s … quite the problem.” You leaned your head on one hand, knuckle against the base of the cranial horn.

“We don’t need to talk about anything you don’t want to,” Ikora said. “The Protective is investigating something out here, and you’re doing good work to track it. If you need anything … you know where to find me.”

“The-there is a, uh, one of your, on patrol. A Warlock outside.”

“She wasn’t on my frequency.” You heard Ikora tap her temple with one gloved hand, the shush of shaven hair.

“You didn’t know? I mean, it’s fine if you didn’t. Sh-she wasn’t anywhere nearby for a long while. There were three Hunters out there a while toward the cliffs, but she, she never exchanged, ah, or talked to them.”

“I had an inkling. Do you mind if she comes here?”

“Why would she?”

“Curiosity.“

You laughed harshly, and felt in your metaneural anterioprocessors how jarring the sound was through Ikora’s mood. A slight impact pulled at the outside of her aura, a solar flare in reverse. You thought about a cliff of silver crystals like stacked spears. “Let…let her in if she finds us,” you said, and went back to your map.

The Voidwalker did find them, probably because of Ikora shining like a beacon. How to Vanguard-proof the Academy? Ikora let her in; Ikora’s fault that there were two more Guardians in the room now. You turned from your map reluctantly, but the newcomer made easy conversation from behind an orange mask, talking about people you knew in common, about how she perceived the Light and how differently it felt on a different planet from the dormant Traveler. You talked, the patterns of the Hezen Corrective faded, and then the Voidwalker bowed, giving you her name - Kass - and a calming wash of VoidLight.

“Maybe we can talk again some time,” Kass said.

You smiled with all of your lights, then wondered whether she would have been able to read it. What cues from her first life might you have missed? Light, there could have been hundreds.

The door hissed open, and the humidity of the room adjusted upward by two percent.

“Be careful,” you said, stuttering over the words and turning back to the map. “The Hezen Corrective is moving at an interval of 15 minutes.”

Kass paused at the doorway with one hand on the frame. “Thanks …?” she glanced at Ikora.

The Vanguard said, “Euclid.”

“Thanks, Euclid.” Kass disappeared, leaving the room humid and the Void a little shallower.

“You planned that,” you said immediately, looking straight at Ikora’s sun-bright radiance and keeping your camera trained on the spot on the map where you marked the latitude and longitude of your own office. One of your hands curled on top of the parchment, faintly creaking.

“Planned to get her to visit you?” Ikora said.

“Y-y-yes. Planned to get me to talk to another W-Warlock.”

“I knew someone was nearby and that she does not like to cause commotions,” Ikora said. “I did not know if you would invite her in.”

“I’m not against helping you.” Suddenly, you have to insist that. Just to be sure. “Let … let me send some of my findings about the Vex to the Tower. They could be, ah, someone could read them who isn’t me.”

Ikora assented. You turned on one camera just to see her nod. Then the words from a minute ago registered, really registered, clanging like a hammer on the power centers in your chest. Why now? Why this, part of you wondered? It was the same part that wasn’t reverberating. Maybe your involuntary processes decided to be truly involuntary for once, and took their time processing. You scanned the time stamp: it was unobtrusive, shoved to the back of the queue by your decision to commit anything, no matter how small, to Ikora and then by turning on camera three.

You- you- you- Euclid. No one had spoken that name in that room in a long time.

The knowledge didn’t floor him. Euclid-319 performed a systems check he thought was unsettlingly quick for how complete it was. Was something missing? Efficiency, safety; he made sure none of his fuses were blown and no one else’s blood was on the floor. Euclid’s fist clenched on the parchment, folding the Vex territory into a crinkling ball. Ikora was at his side in a moment, not quite touching him, shouldering into the overlap between camera three and camera two. Her Light enveloped him, both soothing and containing him. The sun was both a nuclear firestorm and a touch of heat in the summer.

On that day, he heard his Ghost clicking as it fussed over him and over the map. He heard Constant call what he realized was his name.

On that day, he thought of the Tower, of the tumultuous moodnoise in it, of the wings in the sky above the Ishtar Sink, and turned his cameras off.


End file.
